


this broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

by skywalking-across-the-galaxy (BadWolfGirl01)



Category: Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, I don't know how to tag this, Introspection, Obi-Wan Kenobi is a Mess, Obi-Wan Needs a Hug, POV Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Alderaan exploding, and the way the Force reacted, and this happened okay, look i just thought about the similarity between Order 66
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-13 02:37:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16884051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BadWolfGirl01/pseuds/skywalking-across-the-galaxy
Summary: This is the second time he has left Tatooine in the last nineteen years (once for his second padawan, for Ahsoka, because he couldn’t let her be lost too, not her).It will be his last. He knows this. He will never again see the familiar, ever-changing dunes, will never sit in the failing light of dusk outside his farmhouse and watch the stars with only his ghosts for company (Anakin, small and cautiously hopeful, so young, I want to be the first person to visit every star in the sky, Master, will you go with me?; Satine, her hand soft on his shoulder, the warmth of her smile, the softness of her blue eyes, remember, my dear Obi-Wan, I’ve loved you always, I always will; Qui-Gon, the most real of all them, silvery-blond hair and kind eyes and serene smile the way he’s always recalled, I have a new lesson for you, my padawan, something to occupy your time while you wait); he supposes in a way that’s good, the end of the seemingly-endless waiting, the years that drug on and on, especially after-Well.[or: Obi-Wan Kenobi, at the end]





	this broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

**Author's Note:**

> title from "The Hollow Men"

So the time has come.

Nineteen years of exile, of hiding, of the desert wearing him to skin and bones and a faded memory of all he used to be, all culminating in this - the time he finally, finally answers his old friend’s call. 

This is the second time he has left Tatooine in the last nineteen years (once for his second padawan, for Ahsoka, because he couldn’t let her be lost too, not her).

It will be his last. He knows this. He will never again see the familiar, ever-changing dunes, will never sit in the failing light of dusk outside his farmhouse and watch the stars with only his ghosts for company (Anakin, small and cautiously hopeful, so young,  _ I want to be the first person to visit every star in the sky, Master, will you go with me?; _ Satine, her hand soft on his shoulder, the warmth of her smile, the softness of her blue eyes,  _ remember, my dear Obi-Wan, I’ve loved you always, I always will; _ Qui-Gon, the most real of all them, silvery-blond hair and kind eyes and serene smile the way he’s always recalled,  _ I have a new lesson for you, my padawan, something to occupy your time while you wait); _ he supposes in a way that’s good, the end of the seemingly-endless waiting, the years that drug on and on, especially after-

Well.

(There is nothing for him on Tatooine, now, with Beru and Owen dead, and Cody long since gone to live with Rex, Ahsoka, and Jesse - but he supposes he’ll miss it, in a way, despite that. He did, after all, spend a third of his life there.)

Han Solo reminds Obi-Wan of Hondo, in a way, bold and brash and more than he would ever willingly let someone see - there’s a depth of emotion there, Obi-Wan can feel it, can sense it, even though the smuggler seems to be very committed to not letting it show. 

It’s a hard life, growing up under the Empire. Han is, Obi-Wan thinks, Corellian.

He would have learned early that showing your heart only opens you to more pain.

“Kenobi,” Han’s muttering, now, sitting in the main hold of the  _ Millennium Falcon _ with Obi-Wan himself, Luke, and Chewbacca. “The name sounds familiar.”

Chewbacca makes an amused sound.  _ “It should,” _ the Wookiee says, looks over at Obi-Wan with a sharp smile.

It has been good to see Chewie again - at least there’s one familiar face who’s surviving (and possibly thriving?) under the Empire.

Of course, neither he nor Chewie have been stupid enough to  _ act _ like they recognize each other, and very few people probably know they’ve met (Ahsoka steps off Sugi’s ship, battered and bruised and filthy, with two exhausted, half-starved younglings and a handful of Wookiees, and even Obi-Wan’s shields can’t keep out the rush of  _ relief-love-joy-peace _ from Anakin) - the ones who do are dead, or, in Master Yoda’s case, far from this hyperlane.

“Oh, you’re helpful,” Han grumbles, rolling his eyes. “Mind giving me a more concrete answer?”

Obi-Wan just smiles, perhaps a touch more smugly mysterious than he  _ should, _ but he finds so little to be amused by these days (especially since Cody left three years ago), so he has to take the opportunities when he gets them. And the smuggler’s reaction  _ is _ amusing - he groans, melodramatic, flops back against his chair (equally overdramatically - he would’ve gotten along with- no no), swears under his breath. 

“What’d he say?” Luke asks, nodding at Chewie, fiddling idly with Anakin’s lightsaber (it’s Luke’s, now, but Obi-Wan can’t help remembering -  _ how many times must I tell you- my lightsaber is my life, I know, Master, at least I didn’t blow this one up, I can still use this crystal, I’ll go to the workroom and build a new one right away  _ \- can’t help think of it as Anakin’s. Can’t help see Anakin at nineteen, anxiously fidgeting in much the same way on the transport ride to see Padme for the first time in ten years- he needs to  _ stop) _ and frowning.

“He said I should recognize Kenobi, but I don’t know  _ why,” _ Han says, churlishly. “Kriffing asshole Wookiee.”

_ “It’s not my fault you’re too stupid to know the name.” _

Obi-Wan stifles a laugh, schools his face into blank incomprehension as Han  _ swears _ at length and punches Chewie’s arm (rather ineffectually, Obi-Wan would imagine). “I am  _ not _ stupid, I’m smarter than you!”

_ “You’re half my age, cub.” _

“I told you to quit kriffing calling me  _ cub.” _

Obi-Wan thinks Han doesn’t appreciate feeling like a child. No one does, of course, but with Han it’s more obvious - there’s an old insecurity there, and Obi-Wan can’t divine the root of it, but he can sense it, a rough and broken scab imperfectly healed, still oozing, tender to the touch.

“Don’t feel too bad,” Luke says, cheerily, grinning (and he’s reminded of Anakin, again, always, that bright smile, laughing and easy,  _ come on, Snips, race you to the rendezvous). _ “I don’t even  _ recognize _ the name, so at least you’re smarter than I am.”

“Yeah, but you’re a  _ farm boy. _ No offense, kid, but you’re  _ sheltered.” _

Luke’s face shutters a bit, and he looks down. “Not anymore,” he mumbles, soft.

Artoo beeps, comfortingly. (And even  _ that _ is a memory of Anakin, and it’s driving Obi-Wan mad, the constant reminder of that old, old grief, the one he clenches so tight to his heart, where it burns, and that is a failing, that he is not secure enough in himself to release his pain to the Force - but it gives him his sense of self back when the desert and his ceaseless vigil and the ghostly brush of Satine’s lips against his hair leave him struggling to tell fiction from reality, and it is his penance for his failures. Master Yoda would scold for thinking this way, and Master Qui-Gon  _ has _ scolded, but Obi-Wan could’ve  _ stopped this, _ if only he hadn’t gone to Utapau, if only he’d seen sooner the Dark gnawing at Anakin’s heart, if only he hadn’t been so willfully  _ blind _ \- that greatest failing of the Jedi Order, besides its complacency, blinding itself to everything it didn’t want to acknowledge, burying its head in the sand like a desert bird, as though a problem will go away if it’s ignored - if only he’d  _ listened _ to his brother, to his best friend, to his padawan, when Anakin came crying to him in the night, sobbing,  _ there’s a monster in me, Master, it’s eating me up alive, it’s a- a krayt dragon, it’s going to  _ **_kill you_ ** _ one day, I’m so scared, Master, I don’t want my monster to kill you, please, _ but instead he’d said  _ it’s just a dream, Anakin, you’re not going to kill me. _ Anakin had looked up at him, so small, tearstained, whispered,  _ it has a name, Master, my monster, and red eyes, _ and so of course he’d asked  _ what’s its name, then? _ because names have power, and naming a thing grants you some measure of control over it.  _ Vader, _ Anakin had said. Oh, how  _ foolish _ he’d been.)

Obi-Wan shakes his head a little to clear it, puts a hand on Luke’s shoulder, says, “It wasn’t your fault, Luke.”

His brother’s son just shrugs and won’t look up.

Everything goes quiet, then - Han is clearly still miffed at Chewie, trying to puzzle out why he knows the name  _ Kenobi, _ Luke is lost in his memories, Chewie is just silent, and Obi-Wan is-

Obi-Wan is meditating, as best as he can.

That’s why he feels it, a sudden  _ tension, _ and then a sharp  _ scream _ into the Force, a voice he’s never heard before but  _ knows, _ instinctively - it’s the girl. Leia.  _ Nononono, _ she’s crying, so strong the Force  _ reverberates, _ and Obi-Wan reaches without thinking, finds the projection and shields it  _ fast, _ the way he trained himself to do even while asleep, when Luke was young. He has to keep them hidden, and they are both so strong Vader would easily feel an unchecked emotional projection.

The Force is stretched thin, tight, almost to a snapping point, and Obi-Wan frowns, reaches for the source of the tension (if only Mace were here; his gift for shatterpoints would be useful right now - as it is, Obi must follow the lines in the Force, impending fractures, knotting them back together with nothing but the strength of his will, seeking the centerpoint, the epicenter of the coming shatterpoint), notices Chewie looking away from his study of the wall to frown - the only one familiar enough with the Jedi to  _ understand. _

And then, and then, the Force-

The Force-

It  _ breaks. _

And Obi-Wan is  _ drowning. _

_ Help us, _ they cry,  _ please help- _ and gone, gone, gone, millions of voices, all screaming their terror and horror and confusion into the air,  _ children _ crying for their parents, a wave of molten rock on the horizon, the  _ pain _ of burning alive, that particular flavor he has only ever felt once, on the worst day of his thirty-eight (and all fifty-seven, really) years of existence, and then-

_ Gone. _

A tsunami of  _ blackness _ swamps across the broken-glass of the Force, millions - billions - of brilliant lights, warm stars in the Force, all drowning in fire and fear and vanishing, and he- he- he-

Can’t breathe.

(He’s scaling the walls of Pau City’s sinkhole and the Force  _ screams _ a warning, vivid and raw and so, so  _ powerful, _ he can hear the grind of the galaxy’s rotation on its axis in the Force’s voice, like the Father only  _ more, _ and he has no time, just grabs on  _ tight _ and then the rocket hits the cliff just below him, where the Force diverted it, and he’s falling, falling, falling, and by the time he hits the water there’s nothing of him left; everything is  _ gone, _ drowning, too many screams, flashes of a hundred worlds across the galaxy as he  _ feels _ them die, one by one, friends and family and  _ all of them, _ and he  _ feels _ it, blaster bolts sear into his chest and the phantom pain is more real than his lungs screaming for air, and the  _ children, _ the younglings, oh  _ Force _ the younglings. It’s the stabbing, molten-white pain of  _ lightsaber wounds _ that  _ breaks _ him, and he can feel the tethers holding his mind to his body and he almost, almost, almost lets go, because behind everything else, there’s something softer, nearly-silent, so muffled he almost can’t make it out, and then he hears  _ Cody _ crying and he knows, he knows, and he- But Anakin will need him, and what about Ahsoka, alone on Mandalore, is she enough a Jedi for this massacre to extend to her? And a memory of Satine’s voice whispers that he  _ must swim, _ so he does, makes himself numb as the ice on Ilum and doesn’t let himself  _ think.) _

“Ben?” Luke asks, and it’s odd to hear Satine’s nickname from Luke’s mouth, has always been, but that strangeness saves him, pulls him from the Force-

And only a few seconds have passed. He’s in the process of slumping to one side, hand on his heart, gasping - it’s instinct by now to control his face, keep the  _ agony _ away from his eyes, and he swallows, breathes, in and out, forces his heartbeat to a normal pace. “I felt a disturbance in the Force,” he says, and knows he sounds  _ haunted. _ Han scoffs, but Obi-Wan ignores him. “As if millions of voices suddenly cried out and were silenced.”

It’s an understatement, but-

What could’ve  _ happened? _ Obi-Wan has only ever felt a wave of  _ death  _ like this once.

On the heels of the words  _ execute Order Sixty-Six. _

He had comforted himself, sometimes, on the worst nights, with the knowledge that such a catastrophe of that scale was unlikely to happen again, because what kind of  _ horror _ could ever match the genocide of the Jedi Order?

But now-

Now  _ something _ has happened, and the Force will tremble with the aftershocks of this tragedy for a very long time, Obi-Wan thinks.

A part of him is detachedly  _ curious, _ in an abstract way, somehow emotionless (the part of him the sands wore away).

The rest of him hopes he will never have to confront  _ this _ monstrosity too, and perhaps that is selfish of him, but then again. He’s always been a bit selfish.

…

He should’ve  _ known. _

Of course it would be Vader, of course- Vader (not Anakin, never Anakin, if he is to keep his memories of his previous life untainted he cannot think of them as the same, Anakin is dead and it was Vader  _ (my monster) _ who killed him) was at the nexus of Order Sixty-Six, was the one who killed so  _ many _ younglings, it only makes  _ sense _ he’s here too.

Here, in what Obi-Wan is starting to believe is the wreckage of Alderaan.

_ May the Force be with you, Bail, old friend, _ he thinks, and then, an old habit he’s never broken (never wanted to break),  _ Ni partayli, gar darasuum. _

He only wishes he’d been able to-  _ compartmentalize _ this, like he used to be able to, during his days as General, because if he’d only  _ listened, _ he would’ve sensed Vader’s presence long before the tractor beam entangled them.

Now, though, it is too late.

And the Force is clear to him at last.

One single straight path twists away into the future, and he knows  _ (knows) _ what he must do, and so it’s with a strangely light heart he promises Luke and Han he will handle the tractor beam himself. He has a purpose, now, at last, beyond  _ survival _ and  _ sanity _ and  _ safety, _ and then-

Well. He’s been living on borrowed time, for the last nineteen years.

He has too many regrets.

It will, he thinks, be a relief to be free from them at last.

It’s ridiculously easy to slip through the uniform, durasteel-grey corridors, to avoid the notice of Imperial technicians, maintenance crews, and stormtroopers alike, and Obi-Wan leaves himself  _ just _ unshielded enough that he knows Vader will feel him, will come - he will do what he must, for Luke, for Leia (who he can  _ feel _ is here, not far from him), for the wreckage of Alderaan, for all the lost souls, for all the Jedi he failed when he failed Anakin. He adjusts the controls, shuts down the tractor beam with practiced ease (can’t help thinking of so many other missions, of planting charges and slipping out to destroy a shield generator,  _ thanks General, right on time as usual, _ and a laughing salute and  _ what would you do without me, Cody? _ and no no, he can’t think about this right now), because he must finish this mission, this one last gasp of General Kenobi, the Negotiator, before the end of it all.

Before Vader. 

This time, Obi-Wan will not win.

Vader finds him just a few meters from the hangar where the  _ Millennium Falcon _ is trapped, while a seething horde of stormtroopers runs back and forth and blasterfire erupts around him - if he ignores the gradual shift in stormtrooper armor, it almost feels like a familiar old battle from back then, before the galaxy shattered, before the universe as he knew it ended in one single swift stroke. He can’t let himself slip into the familiarity of it all, though, the sameness, because then he falls back into-

No.

He’s walking down the corridor, hood up, lightsaber hilt in hand (although the blue blade in unlit) when Vader steps out of the shadows. Red saber glowing at his side. He walks forward, unhurried, calm (such a far cry from his old Padawan), dark cloak flowing out behind him. Stops a few meters away, and Obi-Wan ignites his saber, because he must. Because he  _ knows. _

“I’ve been waiting for you, Obi-Wan,” Vader says. “We meet again, at last.”

The voice is so  _ wrong. _

There is truly nothing left of Anakin.

“The circle is now complete. When I left you, I was but the learner. Now,  _ I _ am the Master.” His saber comes up, defensive.

Obi-Wan slips into the beginnings of a stance. Soresu. This is not a fight he intends to win, only to use to  _ delay. _ Luke must survive. “Only a Master of evil, Darth,” he says, calmly, doesn’t use the name even though he wants to. Just the title.

Anakin’s old arrogance in a new form.

And, Obi-Wan nearly points out, Vader is still not the Master.  _ What about Sidious, _ he doesn’t say.  _ What about your precious new Master? Have you grown tired of him yet, too? _

He doesn’t say any of it. Just steps forward and attacks, weary and tired. Exchanges a few blows. “Your powers are weak, old man,” Vader says, when Obi-Wan pulls back after the first, testing exchange. (Vader doesn’t use the same forms as Anakin, nothing close - he can no longer use Djem So, the flexibility and range of movement the Jedi forms require, the suit won’t let him).

“You cannot win, Darth,” says Obi-Wan, quiet. “If you strike me down, I will become more powerful than you can ever imagine.”

“You should not have come back.” There’s  _ almost _ emotion in the robotic voice, now, a thread of the anger spilling so Dark and thick into the Force. Beneath the anger is fear, and  _ dread? _

Fear of the death he barely escaped, on Mustafar?

_ I killed you once, Anakin, _ Obi-Wan nearly says,  _ I can’t do it again. _

He does not. 

Neither of them are moving much - Obi-Wan because the motions of Soresu are tightly contained, defensive, focused on preserving energy and deflecting and  _ survival, _ elegant and efficient, no wasted motion, Vader because his suit - but Obi-Wan still backs them nearly into the hangar, twists and flicks his wrist and knocks Vader’s blade away, and that garners the attention of the stormtroopers, who leave whatever it is they’re focused on (Luke, and Han, and Leia), come running over. To watch, probably.

Not that there’s much left  _ to _ watch.

It’s not until he (seconds later) feels the brightly-glowing flames of Luke’s and Leia’s Force-signatures moving out across the hangar that Obi-Wan looks away from Vader. He meets Luke’s eyes, wonders for a moment if the boy remembers-

_ How’d you make the krayt dragon do that, Uncle Ben? _

Likely not. He’d been so  _ small, _ back then.

He has accomplished his purpose, Obi-Wan realizes, suddenly. The Force hums with that knowledge, and so Obi-Wan smiles at Luke, once, soft. A shadow of  _ Obi-Wan _ again, instead of just mad old Ben Kenobi.

This is it, then. The end.  _ I’m sorry, Master Qui-Gon, _ he thinks, distantly, watching Vader.  _ I never could be the Jedi you always hoped I would become. _

He steps back, lifts his saber. Reaches for the calm and the  _ peace _ of the Force, finds himself almost wanting to  _ laugh _ for the first time in- years, now. 

He is free.


End file.
